Egyptian

At the end of the 4th millennium bc, when King Menes, the first king of a united Egypt, started his reign, the ancient Egyptians began to name each year by its main events, presumably to facilitate the dating of documents. These names were entered into an official register together with the height of the Nile during its annual inundation. Short notes at first, the year names developed into lengthy records of historical and religious events, especially of royal grants to the gods. These lists grew into annals, which were kept during the entire history of Egypt so that later kings could, after important events, consult the annals and ascertain whether a comparable occurrence had happened before. Unfortunately, these annals are lost. Only fragments from the 1st to the 5th dynasty (c. 3100–c. 2345 bc) are preserved, copied on stone. These fragments, however, are in such poor condition that they raise more chronological problems than they solve.

The Egyptian priests of the Ramesside period (c. 1300 bc) copied the names and reigns of the kings from Menes down to their time from the annals, omitting all references to events. Even this king list would have given a safe foundation of an Egyptian chronology, but the only extant copy, on a papyrus now kept at the Museo Egizio in Turin, has survived only in shreds, entire sections having been lost. Extracts from this king list, which name only the more important kings, are preserved in the temples of the kings Seti I and Ramses II at Abydos and on the wall of a private tomb at Ṣaqqārah (now in the Egyptian Museum), but they give little help in chronological matters.

When the Greeks began to rule Egypt after the conquest of Alexander the Great, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus, hoping to acquaint the new ruling class with the history of the conquered country, commissioned Manetho, an Egyptian priest from Sebennytus, to write a history of Egypt in the Greek language. As Manetho had access to the ancient annals, he added some of their entries to his list of kings and reigns, especially during the first dynasties. The more he progressed in time, the more he added semihistorical traditions and stories as they were composed by the Egyptian priests to discuss moral problems in the disguise of a historical “novel.” There had been, undoubtedly, fewer historical facts in Manetho’s history than one might expect. But Manetho’s work, too, is lost except for some excerpts used by Sextus Julius Africanus and Eusebius in writing their chronicles. These, in turn, represented the material used in part by George Syncellus in the 8th century ad. During copying and recopying, Manetho’s text clearly suffered many changes, unintentionally or on purpose. The figures of the reigns, especially of the older dynasties, for instance, were enlarged when some of the early Christian historians tried to equate King Menes with Adam. In addition, the excerpts were done carelessly. Therefore, Manetho’s work, as handed down to us, is short of useless. Nevertheless, together with the fragments of the annals and of the king list of Turin, they create a framework of Egyptian chronology; so the division into dynasties was taken over from Manetho. But to achieve a continuous history of Egypt and to bridge the gaps left by the fragmentary state of the extant chronological material, scholars must turn to other means, particularly astronomical references found in dated texts. These are related principally to the rising of Sothis and to the new moon.

Theoretically, the Egyptian civil year began when the Dog Star, Sirius (Egyptian Sothis), could first be seen on the eastern horizon just before the rising of the Sun (i.e., 19/20 of July). As the civil calendar of the ancient Egyptians consisted of 12 months (each of 30 days) and five odd days (called epagomenal days), the civil year was a quarter of a day too short in relation to the rising of Sothis, so that the new year advanced by one day every four years. New Year’s Day and the rising of Sothis coincided again only after approximately 1,460 years, the so-called Sothic cycle. Dated documents mentioning the rising of Sothis can be translated into the present calendar by multiplying the number of days elapsed since the first day of the year by four and subtracting this sum from the date of the beginning of the particular Sothic cycle. The dates for the start of each Sothic cycle are fortunately known because the Roman historian Censorinus fixed the coincidence of New Year’s Day and heliacal rising of Sothis in ad 139. Taking into account a slight difference between a Sothic year and a year of the fixed stars, the years 1322, 2782, and 4242 bc are taken as starting points of a Sothic cycle.

There are six ancient Egyptian documents extant giving Sothis dates, but only three of these are of value. The oldest is a letter from the town of Kahun warning a priest that the heliacal rising of Sothis will take place on the 16th day of the 8th month of year 7 of a king who, according to internal evidence, is Sesostris III of the 12th dynasty. This date corresponds to 1866 bc, according to the corrected Sothic cycle. The next date is given by a medical papyrus written at the beginning of the 18th dynasty, to which a calendar is added, possibly to ensure a correct conversion of dates used in the receipts to the actual timetable. Here it is said that the 9th day of the 11th month of year 9 of King Amenhotep I was the day of the heliacal rising of Sothis—i.e., 1538 bc. This date, however, is only accurate provided that the astronomical observations were taken at the old residence of Memphis; if observed at Thebes in Upper Egypt, the residence of the 18th dynasty, the date must be lowered by 20 years—i.e., 1518 bc. The third Sothis date shows that Sirius rose heliacally sometime during the reign of Thutmose III, which lasted for 54 years, on the 28th day of the 11th month; so year 1458 bc (point of observation at Memphis) or 1438 bc (point of observation at Thebes) must have belonged to the reign of this king. From these dates it is possible to calculate the absolute dates for the reigns of the 12th dynasty, as the durations of most of the reigns of the kings belonging to this dynasty are preserved on the king list of the Turin Papyrus. On the other hand, chronologists are able to compute the reigns of the kings of the 18th dynasty by utilizing the highest dates of their documents and the figures preserved by Manetho. Historians are also helped by the fact that the Egyptians sometimes identified a certain day as “exactly new moon”; they reckoned new moon from the morning after the last crescent of the waning moon had become invisible in the east just before sunrise. As there is a 25-year lunar cycle, such ancient Egyptian moon dates could be calculated with a fair amount of certainty but of course only if the ancient Egyptians themselves observed this celestial phenomenon accurately. There is some doubt, however, as it is shown by the attempts of very competent scholars to convert these moon dates. Sometimes even moon dates given by the same papyrus contradict themselves; in another case, the date given by a document had to be amended to achieve a reasonable result. These and other examples show that ancient Egyptian statements on celestial phenomena, especially on new moons, tend to be inaccurate because of faulty or inexact observations. Therefore, every date given for a fixed reign should be used with caution as the astronomical observation on which it is based may be inexact. Sometimes they are controlled by synchronism with Babylonian, Assyrian, or Hittite king lists or, later on, by the close interconnections between Greek and Egyptian history. Sometimes even biographical data are helpful. The statements found on small stelae inside the burial ground of the holy bulls of Memphis (Apis) register the dates of birth, enthronement, and death of these animals accurately. But the more time recedes, the more the chronology of the Egyptian history becomes uncertain, even when astronomical data are available. Up till now even carbon-14 data are of no great help, as uncertainties are mostly not greater than the standard deviations to be expected in a carbon-14 calculation.

Nevertheless, Egyptologists believe themselves to be on fairly firm ground when dating the beginning of the Ancient Kingdom (1st and 2nd dynasty) about 3090 bc, the beginning of the 11th dynasty at 2133 bc, and of the Middle Kingdom (12th dynasty) at 1991 bc. The New Kingdom started at 1567 or 1552 bc, depending on a choice for the first year of Ramses II of either 1290 bc or 1304 bc—one lunar cycle earlier. The following centuries still pose many chronological questions down to 664 bc, when Greek historiography took over.

Babylonian and Assyrian

Mesopotamian chronology, 747 to 539 bc

The source from which the exploration of Mesopotamian chronology started is a text called Ptolemy’s Canon. This king list covers a period of about 1,000 years, beginning with the kings of Babylon after the accession of Nabonassar in 747 bc. The text itself belongs to the period of the Roman Empire and was written by a Greek astronomer resident in Egypt. Proof of the fundamental correctness of Ptolemy’s Canon has come from the ancient cuneiform tablets excavated in Mesopotamia, including some that refer to astronomical events, chiefly eclipses of the Moon. Thus, by the time excavations began, a fairly detailed picture of Babylonian chronology was already available for the period after 747 bc. Ptolemy’s Canon covers the Persian and Seleucid periods of Mesopotamian history, but this section will deal only with the period up to the Persian conquest (539 bc).

The chief problem in the early years of Assyriology was to reconstruct a sequence for Assyria for the period after 747 bc. This was done chiefly by means of limmu, or eponym, lists, several of which were found by early excavators. These texts are lists of officials who held the office of limmu for one year only and whom historians also call by the Greek name of eponym. Annals of the Assyrian kings were being found at the same time as eponym lists, and a number of these annals, or the campaigns mentioned in them, were dated by eponyms who figured in the eponym lists. Moreover, some of the Assyrian kings in the annals were also kings of Babylonia and as such were included in Ptolemy’s Canon.

Good progress was therefore being made when, soon after 1880, two chronological texts of outstanding importance were discovered. One of these, now known as King List A, is damaged in parts, but the end of it, which is well preserved, coincides with the first part of Ptolemy’s Canon down to 626 bc. The other text, The Babylonian Chronicle, also coincides with the beginning of the canon, though it breaks off earlier than King List A. With the publication of these texts, the first phase in the reconstruction of Mesopotamian chronology was over. For the period after 747 bc, there remained only one serious lacuna—i.e., the lack of the eponym sequence for the last 40 years or so of Assyrian history. This had not been established by the early 1970s.

Assyrian chronology before 747 bc

German excavations at Ashur, ancient capital of Assyria, yielded further eponym lists. By World War I the full sequence of eponyms was known from about 900 to 650 bc. A further fragmentary list carried the record back to about 1100 bc, and on this basis Assyrian chronology was reconstructed, with little error, back to the first full regnal year of Tiglath-pileser I in 1115 bc. Without another eponym list, a king list was needed for substantial further progress. King lists found at Ashur proved disappointing. Those fairly well preserved did not include figures for the reigns, and those with figures were very badly damaged.

In 1933, however, an expedition from the University of Chicago discovered at Khorsabad, site of ancient Dur Sharrukin, an Assyrian king list going back to about 1700 bc. But for the period before 1700 bc the list is damaged and otherwise deficient, and Assyrian chronology prior to this date is still far from clear.

Before 747 bc it was the custom of the Assyrian kings to hold eponym office in their first or second regnal year. Thus, in an eponym list, the number of names between the names of two successive kings usually equals the number of years in the reign of the first of the two kings. It would have been easy to compile a king list from an eponym list, and there is evidence that this Assyrian king list was compiled from an eponym list probably in the middle of the 11th century bc. As an eponym list is a reliable chronological source, since omission of a name entails an error of only one year, the king list, if based on one, will have preserved much of the structure of older eponym lists now lost. (Except for one fragment, no known eponym list goes back further than the beginning of the 11th century bc.)

Babylonian chronology before 747 bc

In the long interval between the fall of the last Sumerian dynasty c. 2000 bc and 747 bc there are two substantial gaps in chronology, each about two centuries long. The earlier gap is in the 2nd millennium, from approximately 1600–1400 bc, the later gap in the 1st millennium, from c. 943–747 bc. During these gaps the names of most of the kings are known, as well as the order, but usually not the length of their reigns.

A means of checking the reliability of the Babylonian king list is provided by the chronicles, annals, and other historical texts that show that a given Assyrian king was contemporaneous with a given Babylonian king. There are no fewer than 15 such synchronisms between 1350 and 1050 bc, and, when the Babylonian and Assyrian king lists are compared, they all fit in easily. Only one of them, however, provides a close approximate date in Babylonian chronology. This synchronism shows that the two-year reign of the Assyrian king Ashared-apil-Ekur (c. 1076–c. 1075 bc) is entirely comprised within the 13-year reign of the Babylonian king Marduk-shapik-zeri. The Assyrian’s dates are probably correct to within one year. Thus, if Marduk-shapik-zeri is dated so that equal proportions of his reign fall before and after that of Ashared-apil-Ekur, a date is obtained for the former that should not be in error more than six years. This synchronism constitutes a key to the structure of Babylonian chronology by providing the base date for all the reigns in the interval c. 1400–943 bc for which the Babylonian king list gives figures. All the dates thus obtained are subject to the six-year margin of error.

These synchronisms between Assyrian and Babylonian kings continue throughout the period that corresponds to the second gap in the Babylonian king list—from c. 943–747 bc. Since the Assyrian chronology in that period is firmly established, these synchronisms provide a useful framework for the structure of Babylonian chronology in that period.

The gap in the 2nd millennium bc, however, is not as easy to fill. The fact that the magnitude of the gap is uncertain constitutes the main problem in the chronology of the 2nd millennium bc and also affects the chronology of the preceding Sumerian period. The problem is not yet solved. Observations of the planet Venus made during the reign of King Ammisaduqa, less than 50 years before the end of the 1st dynasty of Babylon, permit only certain possible dates for his reign. Translated into dates for the end of the dynasty, the three most likely possibilities are 1651, 1595, and 1587 bc. The evidence is not yet conclusive and leaves uncertain what choice should be made among the three. The chronology adopted here is based on the second of these dates for the end of the 1st Babylonian dynasty—i.e., 1595 bc.

Prior to this gap in the 2nd millennium bc, there is a period of five centuries with a well-established chronological structure. All the kings in the major city-states are known, as well as their sequence and the length of their reigns. Which sets of dates should be assigned to these reigns, however, depends on the date adopted for the 1st dynasty of Babylon. This period of five centuries extends from the beginning of the 3rd dynasty of Ur to the end of the 1st dynasty of Babylon—i.e., on the chronology adopted here, 2113–1595 bc. During this period the Babylonians dated their history not by regnal years but by the names of the years. Each year had an individual name, usually from an important event that had taken place in the preceding year. The lists of these names, called year lists or date lists, constitute as reliable a source in Babylonian chronology as the eponym lists do in Assyrian chronology. One of the events which almost invariably gave a name to the following year was the accession of a new king. Hence, the first full regnal year of a king was called “the year (after) NN became king.” In Assyria the number of personal names in an eponym list between the names of two successive kings normally equalled the number of years in the reign of the first king, and, similarly, in Babylonia the number of year names between two year names of the above kind nearly always equalled the number of years in the reign of the first king. Just as in Assyria, the eponym lists are almost certainly the source of the king lists, so in Babylonia the king lists are based on the year lists. Several of these king lists, compiled at a time when the year lists were still in use, survive. One gives the 3rd dynasty of Ur and the dynasty of Isin; another gives the dynasty of Larsa. Both may be school texts.

The 3rd dynasty of Ur and the dynasty of Isin also figure in the Sumerian king list, which reaches far back into the Sumerian period. The original version probably ended before the 3rd dynasty of Ur, but later scribes brought it up to date by adding that dynasty as well as the dynasty of Isin.